2016 and I walk by a bar with a Hillary Clinton – Donald Trump debate on, and the crowd reacting. I catch a response of “that’s right!” to a parry of Hillary Clinton to a Donald Trump name-drop of Bernie Sanders over – – it would seem — trade issues. I get a sick feeling on this — the missed point as they cheer on Hillary Clinton dousing Trump because obviously Sanders is — however shakily — supporting her. It misses a point that Trump is reaching a set of rust belt Sanders or Sanders sympathetic voters in this one. The debate answer works in Trump’s favor, the post show punditry and theater review poll analysis showing Hillary with a win be damned. A threshold holds up for Trump for a section of the that belt electorate — the poll question on “who won the debate?” is as meaningless here as Romney’s smashing of Obama in 2012.

2024. Light years away from a Trump who held it together at key points of 2016. The previous debate had the pre-chatter of a Biden plan to “rattle” Trump, lay out the bait and let Trump show himself to be Trump. Biden, at the end of his effectiveness for the presidency and past the end of effectiveness for performative aspects for the presidency, was not up for it — the big take away is a visual of Biden staring befuddled by Trump’s beguiling mendacious barrage and then Biden unable to weave a response out of it. And that was the end of him. I can deliberate on the meaning of the bad performance, but a good cross-section of the electorate will view anything other than “he’s senile!” as stanning for Biden. The trouble is if the lowest common denominator ask for a vote on Biden over Trump is “normal” versus abnormal, the pointers against that frayed greatly against him now.

There is this desultory feeling I get wading about the political spectacle going into a presidential debate. The key, the staff of political campaigns past say, is to have your one liners and singers at ready. Wait for the moment it comes. Then throw it out there. And! Blam! “You are no Jack Kennedy!”. And with that, meet the next vice president, Lloyd Bentsen.

In the aftermath of the big show, joint appearance with infectious person and one not serious man taking up the issues, I look about the clips of cable news figures. The hackiest of hacks, Fox News’s Jesse Waters, chimes in that Trump got in the lines everyone will know. “See Spot Run” apparently amongst them. A little hard to get there, as Trump moved into the hyper-Internet space of dogs and cats eating Haitian migrants, and that was the end of everything.

Memo to Erik Erikson: your culprit is JD Vance. Further memo: they are running with this one. They got the cop backing it up!

At the risk of doing a hint of that thing Rod Dreher hates for left-wing culture war goal post shifting … Even in the insane scenario that there was some handful of cases of Haitian immigrant cat eating totalling five or so — why should that in the national conversation of immigration issues? Also, aside in that Dreher vantage… What ever happened to slamming Trump for January 6 as the “Beerbelly Putsch”?I

The big line from the “Right” has long been “the left can’t meme”. Sure. The right can meme all right. And if this is “meme-ing”, why would the Left want to bother?

I guess we sit to see how much this skin is back to the ground of “addressing illegal immigration”, and the appeal to those five cross current Pennsylvania voters that will decide the election.

Lost in the sea a bit are a couple other great items. Transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison. Funny that, I would think that would be in the Republican platform — don’t dare cross the border (jump over that wall) or you will face the consequences! It is also interesting to dissect the “Venezuela on Steroids” — on that spectrum that has transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison — what does Venezuela’s government do that falls short of that? Also worth noting, Trump rhapsodized about leaving to Venezuela to Elon Musk. So… He is fleeing to a Hellhole?

A quick jump over to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. I see that their line on the latest DOJ droppings on Russia TV – paid personalities. Taibbi is somewhat hilarious, as he appears to be the big bugaboo for a Bulwark personality — intimating sinister-wise who might get ensnared and exposed as paid by the Russia government — the man JVL trailed off at the end after a list of the usual suspect — Greenwald and Ritter — and the quick mention indicates he wants him revealed. For his part, I do see the Taibbi comment is a Fox News headline — “The Russia Hoax just Will Not Die” — presenting intriguing questions on just what the “Russia Hoax” be and be not to form “hoax”.

I do say Kirn and Taibbi did a fantastic job dissecting the ridiculous celebration on Tim Walz. On this new news item, where Taibbi is required to laugh off people’s casual dumping of him in any mid-length list, it is interesting to hear them move to one woman in the indictment, and kind of scratch their head at her fringe casual. Yes, it is an anti-19th Amendment advocate. Ponder the nature of Russia social and cultural conservative attempts and how they slide off of American political chatter. Or, simply keep within the terrain of online weirdness.

Out in the mists of our political sideshows, Senator Rob Johnson of Wisconsin has endorsed the conspiracy classic The Creature at Jekyl Island — and the fight against the Fed commences, and Ron Paul has won. Ticket Carlson, prime spot speaker at the RNC convention, veers to a guest wanting to take Winston Churchill down a peg — the true villain of World War 2. And the Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Democrats hope can drag Harris to winning the states’ electoral votes — was really big customer of our of state porn.

Actually one weird thing on the last guy, a hitch in the manner Democrats rail on him. It was a somewhat canned and rehearsed spiel from a Democratic official getting to carry forth on MSNBC. “Holocaust denier”, she said, and then “Abortion denier”. I sighed, muttering “knock it off”. Like, take the biggest anti-abortion figure — Constitution Party Presidential nominee Randall Terry. The man does not deny the existence of Abortions. Words appear to cease having any meaning here.

I see a Kennedy yard sign. Something about Declaring Your Independence. The sign is off because I do not think I saw it up there before his “suspended his campaign”. And I guess such a sign does not necessarily work against the Kennedy drop out speech, as the man did state that outside of ten states where you need to vote for Trump to stop Harris you should feel free to vote for me — Kennedy — I still wonder if the lawn sign owner is paying attention with this one. I do not even not what ten states Kennedy refers to — we have things down to seven swing states — eight of you toss in the Omaha district of Nebraska. Maybe he has figures Oregon for the additional states? Maybe California, which Trump believes would go his way of Jesus were counting things because — Jesus is just that in the tank for Trump.

In terms of ad purchases, Trump has actually gotten it all down to two states. Basically. Pennsylvania and Georgia. We can plausibly see little else for the man in the coming months except rallies in those states. Trying to read the tea leaves and sanity of the Trump campaign, I do sense some method to some of the madness. He called out and insulted Brian Kemp as one step to bring him to heel when we need to stop counting.

He has made a first into a few weird niche YouTube figures and podcasters — sub Joe Rogans. A guy by the name of Aidin Ross who — to glance over at his ouver is to fear for the “Generation Zoomer” future. There is. No. Substance. With him. All suppositions that the man is somehow “fascist adjacent” in “alt-right” ideology fall by the wayside because — if he were, he would at least be communicating something. By most accounts Lex Fridman is better — but a sort of free floater soft ball allowing “just let whoever I am interviewing answer what they want to answer” — what little I see is hardly impressive. Here we do get a new blip that was also there in his rambling answers to the head of “Moms for Liberty” — Trump stating that he lost the election of 2020. That is a new one, isn’t it? Throw it into the crapper in consideration of January 6. It don’t.

I see Joe Trippi selling his upcoming social media platform, rejoinder to a post Elon Musk twitter, and one of a bunch frankly. What I would want to know is when The Babylon Bee comes and posts the same material it does on x formerly twitter, are they going to be banished under the same complaint rule they had been in pre Elon Musk twitter? If the answer is yes, I don’t understand this social media fees except just another “Blue Skies” and etc. Facilitating conversation and etc means whatever it means to you, and you are may than free to sell your Overton Window of social media-ing, as I guess is Trump and company.

The presidential campaign of absurdism. continues. Yes, bottom line is always Vote for Harris, “generic Democrat, and it shows”. But things flutter along with some contemplative parcels here and there. I stare at a National Review headline insisting “JD Vance is Good at This After All”, and weigh whether, despite it all, there is some point here. That as much as he becomes a punchline in the modern Democratic Party toadies of late night talk show hosts, and as much as he slides in the backdrop as Trump rather wants bombastic cranks on stage with him — RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard — he is sneaking in the margins off in the states at play. We do see a suggestion that he is playing the role Pence did in 2016 in keeping the wayward Republican politician / influencers in line.

Then Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, got Kemp on the line.

Within hours of their phone call last week, Kemp, who along with his wife had been the target of vicious Trump attacks, was on Fox News publicly declaring his support for the GOP ticket. Soon after that, Trump was thanking Kemp for the kind words.

Looking for an excuse, Kemp was, but if Vance provides it Vance provides it.

Comedy here, Vance paints as good a picture as he can on the doughnut shop workers who were just not into him.

Vance said he enjoys engaging in that kind of retail politicking and added that he has made it clear to his staff that such visits must be planned more carefully in the future.

“We don’t want to have these scripted events — I don’t want to go and do three takes of buying Doritos at a Sheetz,” Vance said, referring to a recent Harris stop at a Pennsylvania gas station. “I like to get out there and talk to people, and we want to make sure we’re doing it but definitely make sure that people are at least OK with being on camera, or we’re going to walk in and you’re going to have a person who has, practically, a panic attack because she’s got 15 cameras in her face.”

Nervous nelly, her. And I suppose him — the other guy standing awkwardly supplying him with doughnuts. It does out a hamper on the “speaks for the rust belt working class” — a funny headline for his Drehrer interview, “I would like to see European elites actually listen to their people for a change“. He the man whose such great rapport with such people?

Look. The Democrats once tried to replace Ted Kennedy with Martha Coakley. Unless you saw a way to play the long game and saw you could wait out a couple years of Scott Brown to get to an Elizabeth Warren Senatorship, if you were a liberal Democrat you were voting for Martha Coakley. A woman who did not know who Curt Schilling was. Awkward personalities happen, people disconnecting completely with parts of “The common clay”. The problem here is — aside from the particular weird “common clay elitism” of JD Vance — is that to flip it over on a “if this were a Democrat” — well, we do see what happened to Martha Coakley. Placing us to points of more relevance — the party now upholding a defense of Trump’s politicking at Arlington and campaign altercation with a worker trying to stop the inappropriate and illegal photographing — up to Vance’s performative “Go to Hell” declaration to Kamala Harris — was the party making hay of John Kerry’s “troops end up in Afghanistan” that seemed to suggest they were uneducated dummies — in 2006, so upholding of the dignity of veterans.

I do come back to some things with Vance – – a point of inference in the National Review “Doing good” column. We have a whole part of the electorate who think they have him pinned and down on a reference to couches. He makes a bad joke, as all politicians do, on the stump, which references a couch. The watch a commentator say “he should know by now not to bring up the couch!”. Should he? My advice to Vance is that in his Senate re-election bid, he make sure to allude to couches. Because there are whole parcels of the electorate who are not clued in on this thing which is — in the end just an inside (immature) joke, who will brush up against it and need something explained. Once it is explained, they will respond with a “so — you just made something vulgar up just to be mean?” , and be more inclined to vote for him.

The political posturing in the party roll call is sometimes interesting. The major hubs have political figures needing to posture — governor Hochul gets her face, never mind how underperforming she is against the Democratic vote in New York. States have got their connections with Carter, Clinton, Obama — and I guess Massachusetts has moved on from Kennedy and Texas from Johnson — that state has Ann Richards to sell. Then there are states hovering in the mind as Republican bastions. Florida gets a “we are fighting back”. Idaho has a wisp of Libertarian Party pride of accomplishment in their “fighting back” declaration — a candidate in every legislative district! I do not know what to make of Utah — “the next battleground state” — the other states attempting the mantle are on former ground.

A number of the southern states can get in with dissertations of civil rights history. Important when you look at a barren party. I was curious to see what Tennessee was going to do. The speakers were those two kicked out of the legislature for bullhorn disruption. Cause celbres are what they got there. Wyoming plucked in the “first woman elected governor” — making sure to put in that she was a Democrat, which is not anything Montana can do when they put in “first congress-woman”.

Missouri seemed the most curiously cautious in addressing a political legacy. While other states pronounced proud Progressive political figures, their speaker told of “Moderates” like Eagleton and President Truman. And I guess the reason for this came in when they pumped up a Senate race “we will dump Josh Hawley”. It seems a thankless job at the moment — a d it is either to Hawley’s credit or not that he is acknowledging his Democratic opponent as though the opponent were within earshot in the race. I was curious here to see how Montana and Ohio — with the two incumbent Democratic Senators needing to run ahead and clearly ahead of Harris and not be tied to this race — would address their man. The show of political stature and partisan positioning differs from Brown and Tester. Ohio placed Brown into their spiel. Montana did not mention Tester.

And I guess in Oregon’s delegation loved them.some Modest Mouse. Washington’s attempt to put in NirvanaSoundGardenPearlJamAluceInChains must have gotten vetoed with a “this isn’t a nationally broadcast Seahawks game!”

He remains in the ballot, but —

In April, after becoming the Natural Law Party’s nominee in Michigan, Kennedy held a fundraiser in Royal Oak with several comedians at the Royal Oak Music Theatre.

Doug Dern, chairman of the Natural Law Party of Michigan, said Friday he was “feeling used and taken advantage of” by Kennedy.

“He pretended to support third-party politics then goes running back to the two-party system,” Dern told The Detroit News.

The Natural Law Party doings populated by big, or even minor, name comedians? Does this party have its cadre of celebrity activists?

The funny thing is that Kennedy is still probably the best vote better for this ballot line. He cannot be removed at this late juncture. I kind of an curious what would have happened had it been done — would the keepers of this ballot line, apparently two people with an eccentric public stance of getting the line to someone in need shut out of the process — have been allowed to find the replacement?

I have no idea why I ever should have ever formulated an opinion on Michele Obama. I guess during the Obama presidency she took to some “healthy foods in school lunch” initiative, which you can deliberate some problems and issues on if you want. How to keep the garbage can from just being a healing mass of broccoli, and how to squelch the whining kids demanding their form dogs. Other than that, their may have been an inver-satuation of forced politeness in some initiative she brought to some educational initiative. But as an apolitical figure — I do not know how you were ever supposed to answer a poll question on favorability ratings. I am told she had the highest ratings, the most popular public figure anywhere. I do not know what that means, but good for her — I guess. I also hear she knocked it out of the park with her speech. I have not watched it, and I assume she did. Though maybe I won’t like it. I mean, I am apparently the only person anywhere who liked Bill Clinton’s speech. Maybe I will be the only person anywhere who does not like Michele Obama’s?

In 2000 a polling question was invented. It has probably had a pernicious effect on our politics. “Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?”. As an intellectual exercise, I go over the list since 2000 and expand each year to include the vice presidential candidates, as fairly frequently these candidates are picked out to balance a ticket with the “have a beer with” choice — such is the case with the Democrats this year. I see 5 Republicans and 2 Democrats here. And I guess I would be obliged to just lie to a pollster lest the answer come back to the candidates and mean something, and result in the hamming up of folksiness. And. I am of course going to be too cute by half. I am having a beer with Mitt Romney, just to send him on his way to Mormon Hell. And the question is supposed to get at some “likability” question, but that is not necessarily what I am going for in having one beer drinking meeting. To be sure, the “beer drinking partner” pick that is this year’s Democratic running mate is someone who is really wearing thin on me. I watch him up the convention — he does a pep rally. Screw this! I fled those regular high school fixtures as soon as I had the chance. Are we going to be subjected to four more years of this crap? Do it is, JD Vance. I do have the sense that if he stumbled out of electoral politics he might have another book in him that is not just careful political positioning. Maybe? No one else here does — Obama, for instance wrote one book in the nineties and then after his Senate victory it is all turgid campaign props and maybe book signing bair. Even Vance’s inflammatory statements suggest a wide ranging bullshitting that is moderately interesting for a spell. More to the point, the dude is flailing right now, and isn’t that the whole “beer sharing” thing — commiserate or something? What does this mean electorally? Jack and squat. Unless I watch a few more things from Tim Walz and decide — screw it! Jill Stein. Though. Do I want to have a beer with her? Maybe I do, actually — identify all the people she is sitting with in Russia.

Trying to figure out a creative or productive or amusing way of watching The DNC convention, I pluck over to Newsmax for their hard hitting analysis. I cannot help but think they may be one up against Fox News for dropping out of, say, the Kamala Harris speech in order to make any of any violence emanating out of the three digits of protesters outside the convention hall. Surely someone here is throwing a bottle?

I await the Free Palestine for LGBTQ+ People solidarity speakers out in Gaza.

The horseshoe theory, of sorts, comes in that these protests also figure more highly in Any Goodman and Democracy Now’s coverage of the convention. Though, they are less likely to call them “pro Gaza”, ascribe a mythical double application of “antifa” demonstrators, and any violence will be placed back over to the police.

The ads for the Newsmax coverage of the AND are illuminating.

And imaging gets a bit weird.

Yeah, they all stand right with your messaging. It ends on Reagan, which raises some odd questions in relation to the recent Trump total focus RNC Convention, the one with no history to it prior to 2016, all living presidents, vice predidents, and nominees dropped out of circulation. Maybe Sarah Palin wanders around somewhere?

Consider too the playlist of JD Vance at a campaign stop in Georgia.

Between the bunch of opening speakers — hitting hard on immigration — and Vance in what is… A parking lot in front of a police station? Correctional building of some sort?

… The stereo played this list of songs.

Metallica “Enter Sandman”. Beach Boys “Surfing USA”. Elton John “Yellow Brick Road”. Kid Rock “American Badass”. Mearle Haggard “Rebuild America First”.

Hitting isolationist sentiment, the song suggests an America that … Terminal decline

Why don’t we liberate these United States, We’re the ones that need it worst?, Let the rest of the world help us for a change, And let’s rebuild America first.

I gather it fits into the Republican anti-NATO message if you also ignore a Democratic Party snortle on “what’s this ‘infrastructure week’?”. We do see the great jump away from the previous Republican presidents.

Yeah, the men in position are backin’ away, Freedom is stuck in reverse, Let’s get out of Iraq an’ get back on the track, And let’s rebuild America first

Accompanying images just after these lines on the music video.

RINOs one and all.

Pondering how much of what to “defend” within the mass of JD Vance material. The Democrats have it trickling out, toss it into the ether at sporadic moments to prolong the political agony, knowing we don’t really need Iranian hacking of Republican research and media leaks to get at this stuff. The new item — Vance sliding right past the “purpose of post-menopausal women” — is a sentiment of armchair biology whose basic terms I have heard more from women than men — obliged to sit it all out. I suppose this may mean that Vance would have been better off in some trad-woman’s podcast on this sphere of thought than an obnoxious bro — but I gather the fallout would be about the same.

Roadkill has become another issue in this political campaign. Not quite at the point that cannibalism had and has been in the campaign — Biden’s random cannibalism anecdote no longer anything to mull over given he has left the campaign which has left Trump alone with his stump speech reference to a fictitious cannibal, he now has cannibals all to himself. Roadkill was on my mind because of a comment made by a Democratic congressman to the biggest and most immediate Republican congressman who said Harris was a DEI hire — “this from a person who supported legalizing keeping roadkill”. I am stuck on the question of how to approach when you respond to one but if nonsense from a political opponents by reference a sane point of disagreement s/he has with them as though it is of the same type of nonsense. I would not exactly trust someone who campaigns on roadkill as a central platform issue, but it is a matter that needs to be adjudicated and I have no interest in prosecuting everyone, hailing tgem, and throwing away the keys. As it were, I have not interrogated the matter of Robert F Kennedy Jr and his dumped bear at Central Park — I am lead to believe that it is transparently false — but Kennedy may have been weaving the story in just such a way as to keep the taking of roadkill into the bounds of acceptance in New York state law.

Fox News, ladies and gentlemen.

I stare at the Trump press conference. The whole thing is untethered by reality. Like, this differs from, oh, Bill Clinton and sexual relations with that woman — which is a lie tethered to reality — you can connect its falseness to the truth that he is evading. Or the Bush Administration and a large constellation of war propaganda, that I have to equovicate on what are actual lies in the 2000s era speeches and what were conclusions fitting priors makes the difference here. On Trump in this year 2024, the old man lives in a myopic fantasy world and he has dragged us all along with it. I really don’t know what to say or do with it, but let us see what is animating Rod Dreher.

This is a hell of a lot more leeway than what either EW Erickson granted Biden post debate (or any other showing his age moment) on how that man could “reset” his campaign. It kind of throws me back to Nikki Haley’s campaign drop out race speech comment that “now hopefully Trump will earn my voter’s support”. Somehow after everything there is no “I’ve seen enough”. No permanent statement is permanent — no “I’m done with this guy” ever sticks.

And Erickson’s “reset”, simply looking at what Dreher has clipped here, is a little bit off kilter from the baseline Republican cries that he needs to get back to messages of the onerous regulation state and tax and spend inflationary big government! — in that what he wants is for him to pound the names of every undocumented / illegal immigrant who committed a violent crime, a matter of demagoguery that though at least tethered to reality — stems from something, anything — still cannot be cut off from the rest of Trump’s spiel. A guy who does that is going to be the same guy who goes after a party member, a guy who does this makes hay over Kamala Harris’s mixed race background — that mean tweets that are your static noise.

Still, I am always trying to find a “something sensical” in the insane morass. By way of contrarianism if nothing else — let’s debate the merits of water storage policy or something. The illustrious reporters here a tad tied down to horse race coverage, I do find myself in agreement with Trump’s sneering of “what a stupid question” on why we are not seeing him campaigning. It is ultimately nothing that should concern me or you — spectator sports are all good and well but I am wanting and hoping for a mass re-conceptualizing of it all. And maybe we see it anyways — the broadest part of the populace only tunes in now. After this statement, Trump makes no sense and then bobs back into sense. He is filming ads on a level you have never seen from right here. Nonsensical statement. He shuffles away the statement “Montana is a swing state” by offering, sanely, he is out campaigning for Senate candidates. Though, he throws in what is apparently a stop-over in Wyoming, which I assume there are rich jackasses there to meet and raise funds out of, but in political terms other than maybe trolling Lynne Cheney there is not much political point. A Republican primary is set, but he is just endorsing the incumbent. Like, I am sure there are elected Democrats somewhere in the state, but I have to squint hard to figure out where this dirty trick flier is even aimed at.

Well. We need to know the evil that lurks in Tim Walz.

I see the National Review has Rich Lowry land him as a combination force of Blagojevich and Menendez. There was a third name but it evades me. At least more interesting a charge than radical leftist, but I kind of figure that their worldview is one that views any expansive government run program as corruption defacto. But the bigger issue here is that on Lowry, he already said multiple times he is done with Trump and yet… Nothing sticks.